A Curious Matter
by TheAmethystRiddle
Summary: Camp Green Lake's first ever girl is pretty, witty, and undeniably suave. She immediately assures the hopeful boys that she is gay. This is a lie, and not the last. And why does Mr. Sir seem to like her so much? Definitely NOT Mr. Sir/OC.
1. What Makes an Arrival

**Probably I'll write a longer and more detailed (or just entirely different) version of this fic later, but I wanted to get it out of me so that I'd stop spazzing. The setting is (for the moment) pre-book (but in the other one it'll probably be an altered post-book reality). THIS IS NOT your typical girl-comes-to-Camp-Green-Lake fic. It was written entirely for the purpose of the Warden/Mr. Sir randomishness. THERE IS NO ROMANCE involving the OC. I don't think. Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer:: I own nothing. Well, maybe this chick that's my OC... she's kind of me. So I sort of own her. Because she has no relevance to anything.**

**Full title of the chapter is "What Makes an Arrival an Event Is Not The Arrival But The Events It Arrives Upon."**

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It was obscenely hot the day she came to Camp Green Lake. The old, worn-out bus had left the night before so that she could make use of her first day at camp the way that she would make use of the rest of her days at camp. Digging.

She was, admittedly, very nervous. She wasn't sure what she was doing, or what she was going to do, at an all-male juvenile correction camp. She understood what she had _done_, certainly, but why she had been sent to this godforsaken lack-of-a-lake was beyond her. She could practically feel the testosterone hovering in the air, like some giant, metaphorical phallus.

It was all because of her damned curiosity! If she just hadn't... but now was not the time to think about that, because the bus was pulling to stop in front of a small camp made up of several tents and a few wood-and-stone buildings. The cop uncuffed her and she climbed off the bus into the sweltering heat. A man, tall and rather handsome (in a distinctly rugged and evil sort of way) stood alone in the center of the complex, presumably to act as a rather pathetic welcoming committee.

"This her?" he asked, opening a pack of cigarettes with deft fingers. He was a man of few words, she decided. When the cop nodded, he added, "Hm. I expected something less... effeminate." A man of few but scathing words. She bared her teeth and he bared his back, his pearly whites surprisingly so for a man who smelled like he smoked heavily.

He handed the policeman a stack of papers, small but imposing, and the cop left. He stared at her for a few moments, as if unsure of how to approach her. She supposed he wasn't used to dealing with girls.

"Here." He finally shoved a pile of clothes at her, and she took them and stared at him blankly. There was tense silence for a few moments, and then he commanded, "Change into them. That's usually what uniforms are for."

She resented the fact that he thought her stupid, but continued to stare (though it was more like a glare) pointedly.

"Do you really think I care?" he said finally, throwing up his hands and turning his back.

"Bloody pervert," she muttered under her breath as she kicked off her shoes, dropped her pants, and started to remove her shirt.

"Excuse me?" He whirled around, completely unfazed by her defiant half-nakedness, then clapped a hand to his cigaretted mouth and turned back around.

"Bloody homo," she added, pulling the pant legs over her brother's boxers. She had already pulled the orange t-shirt on, and was glad for this when he whirled around again and nearly knocked her over with one hand, placed disconcertingly at her throat.

"I've got enough rumors flying around the damn camp without you throwing in your two cents as well!" he hissed, almost on top of her. A passerby might wonder whether they should call the police or back away, embarrassed for intruding on an intimate moment. His smoky breath was mixed with something else, a rather nice scent. Spiced peaches, perhaps? She found herself less scared and more intoxicated by his closeness, a fact she quickly hid.

"Yes, sir." She adopted a look of intimidated complacency, trying to widen her eyes innocently at him.

"Mr. Sir." The voice came from behind her, a woman's voice full of authority. _This_ was a voice that made her shiver with fear. Evidently Mr. Sir (could that really be his name?) felt the same, because he quickly backed away from her, wiping the hand that had been at her neck on his jeans, as if to wipe away any evidence. She turned slowly, dreading what she might find.

To her surprise, the woman behind her was quite pretty, the way that a coiled snake is pretty, or a bird of prey. She had fiery orange-red hair and a cowboy hat above sharp eyes and a sharp outfit. The sleeves of her plaid shirt were rolled up and the shorts stopped confidently at her upper thigh. The only hot-looking thing about her outfit were a pair of worn black boots that came almost to her knees. As she pulled on her own shoes, the girl wondered how she could stand to be encased in so much leather when it was probably a hundred degrees.

"Feeling her up already, Mr. Sir?" The question was quiet, jesting almost, but Mr. Sir turned a shade of red to rival the woman's hair. "I'd think you'd at least let her get situated first."

Mr. Sir looked absolutely livid. "That's sick," he spat, through clenched teeth. Her mock-heart fell, then rose again. Maybe he was just saying that.

Both females looked expectantly at Mr. Sir, who took a moment to realize they were expecting an introduction. In the singular.

"The Warden. Don't mess with her." His expression demonstrated exactly what might happen if you crossed her. The girl decided it would be best to keep her distance.

The Warden took over for an enraged Mr. Sir, who was having difficulties speaking. He took a long, angry drag on a new cigarette as she spoke. "You'll dig one hole each day, five feet deep and five feet in diameter. Your shovel doubles as a measuring stick. Showers last exactly four minutes, no more. The water shuts off then. You'll have biweekly meetings with your counselor, though you'll see them throughout the rest of the week as well. If you're late for any of the meals, you don't eat. Sleep when you can; you'll need it. Keep your head down and do as you're told, and you'll be out of here on schedule." She turned to Mr. Sir. "Did I miss anything?" she asked.

Mr. Sir considered (or perhaps savored) for a moment, then added, "You're in 'F' tent."

The Warden smiled, and the girl wondered if perhaps she hadn't allowed Mr. Sir that small victory. "Mr. Sir will take you out to the holes in the water truck today. Every other day, you will walk or ride with your tentmates."

The girl headed for the truck and heard Mr. Sir, behind her, do the same. A quiet "wait" stopped both of them, and then the girl walked on. That tone of voice was not for her.

Sitting in the passenger seat of the truck, she could hear lowered voices. She leaned back a bit, the better to hear them.

"... about that." The Warden's voice.

"Yeah."

"You know I don't..." The voice faded out, and the girl leaned back farther, straining to hear.

"Yeah."

"... Well?"

"Well, what?"

"Hard feelings?"

"... No."

She thought she could hear the happiness in the Warden's voice when she answered. "Good."

There was a silence, and the girl was left to use her imagination.


	2. Dig A Hole, Smoke a Smoke

**There was going to be some history or something here. But I figured, screw that. It's too difficult. I'll do it later. Woo. This could present problems later on in the story...**

**I didn't actually go do any research about tobacco. That's not to say that I just made that stuff up out of whole cloth, I just read something like two articles and took them as truth. Since one was a state website and the other was a textbook website, I'm fairly sure they're correct, but feel free to chew me out for not actually knowing anything about cigarettes. I could tell you loads more about weed. But I won't.**

**Oh, and if anyone has any ideas for a name, it'd be great if you shared it. I wasn't going to give her a name, but until she gets her nickname (and after she rejects it- as if I've written that part), it sometimes gets a little awkward when I'm writing.**

**The full chapter title is "Dig A Hole, Smoke A Smoke - Dig A Smoke, Smoke A Hole; Let The Smokers Dig While The Diggers Smoke."**

**Tell me if I should make Will's name Spocktacles. Or Dylan's name Spockrates. xD Star Trek fangirl much?**

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There was silence in the truck as they made their bumpy way though the labyrinth of holes. Although it didn't bother the girl _that_ much, the quiet was distinctly uncomfortable. She thought several times that she was going to say something, then shut her mouth and continued to look out the window. She glanced over at Mr. Sir from time to time, doing her best not to move. She took silent, deep breaths of the cigarette smoke, closing her eyes as she did so. She hadn't had a smoke since they'd picked her up a week and a half ago and even though she wouldn't really call it an addiction, she'd been craving one for days.

"Want one?" Mr. Sir asked, and she jumped slightly. She turned her head just the tiniest bit to see if he really was offering her one, started to reach towards the outstretched box, and then stopped herself with some difficulty.

"Really?" She didn't want to be caught in some joke at her expense, and she wasn't sure that Mr. Sir really liked her all that much.

"Yeah. Water's scarce here, not tobacco."

She blinked at him, then took the cigarette and the light he offered her. She inhaled deeply and then leaned back, feeling infinitely more relaxed. She debated for a moment over making a smartass remark, then shrugged and figured, _What the hell?_

"S'not actually any tobacco grown in Texas, y'know that?" she said, glancing over at him. "S'all grown along the Atlantic coast."

"Used to be. My daddy's daddy owned a couple of acres. The good stuff, like in Cuban cigars. But the market had died out by the time my daddy got the farm, so he switched to cotton."

There was silence in the truck. The girl almost wanted to laugh and say, "What?", the comment had come so far out of the blue. "That's cool," she said instead. "My brother gets those Cuban cigars, 'cos he can afford them. It's... it's ridiculous." She'd wanted to use a smaller word; she didn't want to sound too smart.

"What is?" Mr. Sir pulled the truck to a stop by a far-out cluster of holes and looked over at her.

"How fucking rich he got." She pushed the door open angrily, jumping down to the dusty earth.

The five boys surrounding them each stood in shallow holes about the same width, digging furiously. She had a feeling that none of them really had that kind of stamina- more likely they hadn't been working until the truck had come into sight and were now trying to make up for the difference.

"You boys better thank this young lady," said Mr. Sir, his Southern drawl suddenly much more pronounced. "Since I had to bring her all the way out here, I figured I'd just go ahead and fill up your canteens an extra time."

A chorus of tired _thank you_s rang out as the boys scrambled for a place in line. There didn't seem to be much of a hierarchy, but the girl knew for sure that her place was at the back. As he filled each boy's canteen, Mr. Sir called out the boy's name and the boy would call out a nickname, echo-like.

"This is Dylan-"

"Socrates."

"Logan-"

"Leprechaun."

"Jack-"

"The Captain."

"Will-"

"Spectacles."

"And Jimmy."

She waited for a nickname, and when one was not forthcoming said, "'Sup, Jim?" The other boys looked rather disappointed, but Jimmy blushed a little and smiled.

"Help her out, Jim, will ya?" Mr. Sir finished filling her canteen and handed it back to her along with a shovel. "Show 'er the ropes and such." Jimmy smiled and nodded as Mr. Sir headed back to the front of the truck. The girl turned and walked towards a spot far enough away that no one would be throwing dirt in her hole. She had just stuck the shovel in the dirt when she heard Mr. Sir.

"Hey!" She turned and watched, leaning on her shovel, as he tossed her an unopened pack of cigarettes. "Don't smoke 'em all, now!" he called, and she watched the water tank rattle in the truck bed as he drove away.

She turned to face the expectant boys, scanning their faces and drawing a merciful blank on their names. "What?" she asked, testily, and then picked up the shovel she had dropped to catch the cigarettes, which she had stuck in the pocket of her uniform. There was silence behind her.

"What?!" She whirled around and glared at the lot of them. They continued to stare.

"You're a.. girl..." one of them said finally, raising a tentative finger to point at her. He had dark hair and fair skin and looked as if he could barely lift a shovel, but the hole he stood by was the deepest of the five.

She glared. "Yes, and guess what else? I'M GAY!" She yelled this last bit at the sky, spreading her arms wide and making her voice as loud as she could.

Boys all around, not just in her group, turned to stare as this failed to echo across the vast flatness. The five before her laughed hesitantly and waved it off as if it had been a joke, but their eyes were uncertain and the girl's mouth remained set in a straight line as she turned back to the scratch in the dirt where she was to begin her hole.

Four of the boys went back to their holes, digging in between sideways glances at the girl who ignored them pointedly. It wasn't until the last boy had given up that she turned to a waiting Jimmy and whispered, "Not really."


	3. Fair Friends Weather Winds

**Hey. Hey! If you like this, you should definitely go read LeMoNsOuR's "My Name is Mr. Sir"! It's about Mr. Sir when he was a kid and it's HILARIOUS. So that's what you should go do! Because LeMoNsOuR was super awesome and mentioned my fic! Also because it's great! It's beautiful! (In every single way!)**

**I wrote this chapter once and then something happened and it died and I haven't written anything since. I had a little bit saved, but it's been so long since I messed with it that it disappeared from my Document Manager. But I think I'm going to try again. Review, you guys! It motivates me!**

**The full chapter title is "Fair Friends Weather Winds Whether The Weather Is Fair Or Not".**

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She was not the last person to finish digging. This was less a testament to her doubtful digging skills and more a testament to Jimmy's patience. For every shovelful of dirt she dug, he took one that was slightly smaller. For every drink she took, he took one that was slightly longer. Mr. Sir came twice more during the day, once with lunch and once more with the most refreshing water she'd ever tasted. Each time she thought he might be smiling at her but couldn't be sure enough to smile back. Instead she just looked down and went back to her hole.

Halfway through the day she'd reached into her pocket for the packet of cigarettes and realized that Mr. Sir hadn't given her any matches to light them with. She'd sighed and slipped them back into her pocket, only to pull them out again, along with a matchbook and a little note. "The Warden thinks of everything." From this moment on she had a profound respect for the woman, but a slight fear of her as well. If she could see the future, she could probably read minds.

Now the girl stood in the bottom of her completed hole, shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun until it sunk behind an oddly shaped rock formation. _Just like a thumb,_ she thought, and held her own up to compare.

"Pretty cool, huh?"

In the vast quietness of the nearly-empty desert his voice sounded small and and timid. It cracked on the last syllable and he blushed a bright pink. She tried not to smile in response. Jimmy was kind of pretty.

"Yeah." She had the strange fear that if she talked too loudly, if she broke the silence too much, the whole giant desert would come crashing down on her. She fought the urge to hold her breath to be quieter.

"D'you want help?" Jim asked, and the spell was broken. The girl let all her captured breath go; despite her best efforts it had trapped itself in her chest during her half-trance.

"Yeah," she said again, and then added, "Thanks." The two of them combined were practically illiterate.

She heaved her shovel up over the side of the hole, placing it with a muffled thump in the dirt, as Jim braced himself at the edge of the hole and held out a surprisingly clean hand. As the girl reached for the one hand she noticed he held a pair of gloves in the other. She settled her blistered palm in his calloused one, wincing but trying her best to hide the pain. With a grunt of "One- two- three-" he pulled the girl up to the edge of the hole, and there they stood for less than a moment, delicately balanced like some ornately designed desk ornament, before they fell back into the hole with a shared yell and flailing limbs.

There was another frozen moment at the bottom of the hole, a stunned silence before they could think to extricate themselves from one another's limbs. They stared blankly at one another in close quarters before springing apart as gracefully as they could manage. Jim stumbled into the wall of the hole before clawing his way up and out to sprawl on his back on the ground, and the girl flung herself across the hole to follow him but couldn't quite make it, her fingers slipping at the edge and dragging her blisters through the dirt so that her hands felt as if they were on fire. Jim grabbed her by the wrist and, with a mighty grunt, dragged her up, out of the hole, and over his lap to rest, breathless from their flight, in a heap. They stared at each other from their respective positions, wondering what the other might say.

And then they began to laugh. The girl army-crawled the rest of the way out of the hole and flopped next to Jim, who had fallen back onto his back with the force of his laughter. She gasped for breath as she laughed, trying not to inhale the dirt next to her face. As soon as their laughter began to abate they made eye contact and began to laugh all over again.

Finally they calmed down, their breathing the only sound in what seemed to be the whole desert. "We should probably head back before dinner starts," Jim said, not moving.

"Yeah," the girl replied, and then giggled, setting them off into a whole new fit of laughing.

From that moment on, they were friends.

They just barely had time to put their shovels away before they had to run to the mess hall for dinner. They tagged along at the back of the line, not saying anything to each other but feeling a sense of companionship anyway. Not that they could have heard anything had they spoken- the mess hall was one huge conversation, shouted at the top of each boy's lungs. If the desert would fall if its silence was broken, the girl was sure this building might collapse if there was ever a moment of silence within it. The line shuffled slowly along as boys collected trays and were served piles of unidentifiable slop in different colors. And bread. The bread was definitely a plus.

The girl tore pieces of the crust off with her teeth as Jimmy led her to the F tent table. The tin spoon and cup wobbled precariously as she wove through the hall and then rattled as she set her tray down on the table. The boys didn't have to bother to look up when she did so; they had been watching her since she'd walked in.

"So what'd you and your girlfriend do out there, huh? You sure were out there a long time!" A skinny, bespectacled boy spoke up, shaking his blonde hair out of his thin face and leering at the two of them. An older boy, one with a tanned face and wavy, dark hair, glanced at the blonde boy disapprovingly.

"Hey! Isn't anyone listening to me?" The pale boy from earlier in the day leaned forward to force his way into the conversation, his meager, dark beard making his face look even paler and more haggard.

"Hey, shut up, Sock," the shortest boy- Leprechaun, perhaps?- replied, turning a slightly cherubic face to look reproachfully at the boy who must be Socrates. "All you talk about is boobs, and while that's usually cool, no one really cares right now." There was a chorus of yeahs from the other boys, all except Jimmy and the dark-haired one.

"Hey, shut up, okay? All of you." All the boys at the table grew silent as the girl spoke. She inspected her food casually and then looked up to find them watching her closely. "Nothing happened. You're all dumb. Just talk about boobs or whatever. I don't care." She picked up her spoon and tasted the brownish pile of slop. It wasn't bad.

"Hey, Jimmy, why's your girlfriend such a bitch?" The blonde boy asked, making a face at her.

"Leave her alone, Specs. Leave them both alone." The older boy's voice was quiet, but the blonde boy- Spectacles, apparently- ducked his head and started shoveling food in his mouth.

The girl smiled at the dark-haired boy gratefully and prodded her food with her fork. She felt a bit queasy now, honestly, and wasn't sure if she was up to the green slop.

"I'm Jack." She glanced up at the boy, who was looking at her expectantly. She smiled again and tasted the yellowish slop tentatively. Definitely not eating that.

"Your girlfriend doesn't even have a name?" Specs had clearly been waiting for a chance to make another jibe.

"Shut up." Three voices spoke in tandem- Jack's dangerous, the girl's indignant, and Jimmy's pleading. Specs looked down again and began attacking his food.

"If she doesn't want to share, fine. She'll get a new name soon enough." Jack looked away and ate his food quietly, but the girl had the disconcerting feeling that he was disappointed in her. She glanced nervously around the table at her silent groupmates before resuming her meal wearily. This was going to be a long sentence to serve.


End file.
